This collection of reviewed resources from TeachersFirst is selected to help teachers and students learn about the United States Constitution and to plan projects and classroom activities so students can experience the Constitution as a "living document." Whether you spend one class in celebration of Constitution Day or an entire unit on the Constitution, the ideas included in the "In the Classroom" portion of reviews will launch discussions and projects your students will not forget.

In the Classroom

Use the resources in this collection to supplement a unit on the American Constitution. The resources on this site could be used for webquests, learning centers, lesson plans & the like. American History teachers will love this one!

This website is a source of free, downloadable documentaries. It is a nonprofit site. The site explains, "you can stream interesting and provocative documentary films for free!" Teachers will want to preview before you share with your class simply because of what "provocative" could mean. Most films are full length, but some are short. There is a helpful menu of topics on the right hand side of the computer screen. This menu makes it easy to navigate and find the type of documentary that is needed. Documentaries range from 9/11 and the London Bombing to The Road to Guantanamo to The Panama Deception to many others.

In the Classroom

Share this site on your interactive whiteboard or projector. View clips relevant to your topics of study. Use this website to contrast a documentary with the facts that are being taught. Use this site as a point-counterpoint to other perspectives available on the web as part of a discussion of bias. Compare and contrast analysis of the materials versus the known facts is one good use for this website. A short documentary could be shown during class as a launch point for students to create their own documentary style video projects. Share the videos using a site such as Teachers.TV (explained here). Teachers of gifted and high achievers will great possibilities for challenging critical thinking using this site.

Create your own motivational poster easily and effortlessly. Choose a random picture, one from the Internet, or one chosen from your computer. Choose colors to border the picture and the type of text to be used. Enter your text and preview the result. Once complete, save to Flickr, your computer, or print using a separate site. Remember you can use a saved image in PowerPoint shows and on a class wiki, as well.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

You need to know how to browse and upload a file from your computer or find the URL of an image already on the web (one you can legally use, of course!).

Make sure students are aware of copyright laws. Use this site to encourage proper use of photographs that students have the authorization to use. Model including appropriate photo credits on the posters.

Younger students can use this tool together as a whole-class activity or simply enjoy the posters their teacher creates. Have students create a picture about what has been studied with a caption of what has been learned. For example, create posters about predators and prey or classifications of animals. Students can create a poster of a study skill or learning activity that helps them learn. Create a caption that explains how the student learns the best. Every subject area can use this resource to create interesting presentation posters for display or as springboards to talk about what was learned. For example, in Biology, students could create a poster about a cell part with a clever caption about the importance of the job. In Literature or History, students can create posters about the perspectives of others in the story or at that time of history. Rather than a traditional research project. Have cooperative learning groups use this site to show their knowledge in any subject area. Ask students to apply concepts such as constitutional rights by illustrating them in poster images with captions. Teachers can create bulletin board images, as well. Have a classroom motivation poster competition to start off the school year! Share the winners on your class wiki or in a PowerPoint presentation at back to school night/open house. As special occasions approach, have students bring in or take a digital picture they can make into a poster as a family gift with their own inspirational saying.

This website is dedicated to delivering a variety of virtual field trips. The trips are listed by content. Each trip contains objectives, concepts, and terms to know. There are lesson plans linked in the Teacher Resource section of the page, and extra information on the topic. The trips themselves are a lot like guided web quests. The websites that are used in the field trips show good variety. And standards are even provided! The trips include grade levels. Examples of topics include hurricanes, dinosaurs, deserts, natural wonders, dark ages, and American Presidency.

In the Classroom

Virtual field trips from this website could be used on the interactive whiteboard or projector as a whole class activity. A better use could be to create a question sheet that mirrors the trip and have students work through the field trip at their own pace in lab, either with partners or individually. Follow up by challenging student groups to create an interactive guidebook to their topic using a tool such as Bookemon, reviewed here. With younger students, make a class book together.

See a visual timeline of the worldwide economic crisis beginning in 2008, from the point of view of a non-U.S. source. Reuters shares 365 days of upheaval beginning in fall, 2008 via pictures, captions, videos, articles, facts, and more in a highly interactive timeline.

In the Classroom

Explore the timeline on your interactive whiteboard or projector as a class or ask students or groups to explore it on their own, looking for key points and terms that help them better understand this complex crisis. Ask student "guides" to trace and elaborate on trends they find or to highlight key moments as they explain orally to the class. Have students respond to a single image using an online tool to narrate an image such asThingLink, reviewed here, or in a blog post. Find an event to which they can connect from their own personal or family perspective. Compare these vignettes with others from the Great Depression photos of great photographers. Keep the link to this interactive timeline on your class web page or wiki as a reference or as a venue for sharing students responses.

This collection of downloadable PDF documents provides lesson plans, handouts, and text readings to accompany the twelve units in Daniel Boorstin's A History of the United States Daniel (Needham: Prentice-Hall, 1989). Though the materials are very traditional (paper, pencil), the concepts demand a more thoughtful, sophisticated approach to U.S. history via essential questions. The units are intended to serve as support materials for debates in one of several formats explained in the Overview document.

In the Classroom

Teachers do not need to start from scratch to develop the themes, nor do they need to be using Boorstin's book to use these activities. Use these handouts and themes to prompt traditional debates or challenge student teams to prepare position videos or multimedia presentations using resource images and texts both from these files and from public domain files and other resources from the Library of Congress. Invite your students to choose from the many multimedia tools on the web to present their position. See the TeachersFirst Edge for reviewed suggestions including ThingLink, SchoolTube. or TeacherTube for videos, or (Podomatic for audio-only arguments. Embed the products on your class blog or wiki and let classes vote on the debate "winners."

View data sets to determine trends in data. Enhance critical thinking skills and analysis by choosing "Raw data." See the "Tool Catalog" for access to widgets and data mining tools, or "GeoData" to determine trends, ask questions about these trends, and search for answers. As you teach about data manipulation in math class, use "real world" examples that students will find interesting. A tutorial on using the data is provided. Search the database by search term, file type, or category as well as the state and local level. Either view data or download for later analysis. Be sure to check the Data Policy on the site for citing and using data set information and the other sections including an FAQ section that is very helpful. Looking for data sets that you can't find? Suggest them to Data.gov for consideration.

In the Classroom

Demonstrate this site (or the portions useful in your classroom) on an interactive whiteboard or projector. Use data related to population such as birth, death, marriage, etc. as well as other social data such as energy and utilities and education. As you teach about data manipulation in math class, use "real world" examples that students will find interesting. Geodata includes data sets such as Biology and Geology, political boundaries, and Atmosphere and climate. As a problem solving activity, allow students to access any data of interest, develop a useful graph, and create a statement or set of questions about the data. Looking for an online graphing tool? Check out Chartgo (reviewed here). Students should develop reasonable hypotheses about the data, find relevant information that leads to further understanding, and potential solutions for understanding the problem. Class discussions can lead to the complexity of most problems and associated issues. Students can create elevator pitches that propose solutions or reasons to be concerned about issues or related blog posts that follow the conversations about the data. Create a dialogue with scientists, government officials, or other experts in understanding data, issues, and solutions. Use data as evidence for debates.

Happy Birthday To You.... U.S. Government. This fantastic site provides a large collection of lesson plans, interactives, resources for students, and more. All activities relate to Constitution Day (celebrated in September). Visit the Educators link and search for activities by specific topics, or the Resource tab to find lesson plans, audio visual, activities, and more. There are also links for students, government & military, and community leaders.

In the Classroom

Before you start planning your Constitution Day activities, check out this FREE site. Since this site was created by the National Constitution Center, you can be sure that the material is of high quality. Share the audio and visual on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Take advantage of the lesson plans and more. Have students fill out a graphic organizer as a pre and post assessment about what they know about the Constitution. A KWL chart works well for this. Find an interactive graphic organizer at Holt Graphic Organizers, reviewed here. Alternatively, challenge students to create a multimedia poster or infographic about what they learned using Genial.ly, reviewed here.

This site presents current news stories from multiple perspectives, featuring videos and commentary from the world's top newspapers. All the video news clips offer a complete transcript (click on "transcript" just below the video window). General topics covered include the U.S., the world, the environment, culture, technology, economy, and politics. Students can see short news clips, make comments blog style, and read news articles from newspapers around the world. Anyone can view the material, but you must register to be able to make comments. Check your school policies about accessing/sharing student email on school computers. If you plan to have students register individually, you may want to create your own Gmail account with up to 20 subaccounts for each group of students (by code name or number) within your classes. Here is a blog post that tells how to set up GMail subaccounts to use for any online membership service.

In the Classroom

This site is ideal for your interactive whiteboard or projector, learning station, or on individual computers (with headsets). Use this site to keep your students up to date on current events. Have students compare the different versions of the same news stories to try and ferret out the facts and the way points of view affect reporting. Project the scripts on an interactive whiteboard to have students highlight language choices that provide a certain slant. ESL/ELL students will benefit from listening to the short news clips and being able to see the transcript of the report. Have your ESL/ELL students write their own comprehension questions and answers based on the podcast to check their own comprehension and to exchange with classmates. Use an online tool such as Interactive Two Circle Venn Diagram (reviewed here) to compare the differences in two newspapers' versions of the same news. Have ESL/ELL students present the news from a newspaper familiar to them if possible by having them prepare an introduction and questions. Learning support students can use the transcripts and videos in combination to understand and report weekly current events assignments for social studies class.

Combine data sets from International agencies with the visualization of Google Earth 3D or Google Maps 2D for a great way to look at data. Search data such as population growth rates, birth rates, education expenditures, and age structure diagrams by clicking and highlighting the data set and then clicking the "preview in map button." Click "download kml file" to save this file for others to see. This file can be embedded into a blog, wiki, or website. Choose between 2D, 3D, or data views for the information as well as using different coloring for portions of data. Rotate the globe on the screen to view other areas. Click on a country to view a pop up box that displays detailed information. Data sets can be downloaded through the link at the bottom. If you do not have access to Google Earth (free, loadable) software, you can use the data in Google Maps without installing anything.

In the Classroom

Assign students various countries within a data set to make comparisons. Tie the data to biological, geographical, cultural, and social issues that exist in the world. Bring a greater understanding to economic and environmental issues currently a problem in many countries throughout the world. World language classes can see this data to help students understand the cultures of the countries where the language is spoken. Have students use an online graphing tool such as Chartgo, reviewed here, to display results. Compare specific attributes of two countries using an online Venn Diagram, such as the Interactive Two Circle Venn Diagram, reviewed here. Another idea: have cooperative learning groups use this resource to create online books about the country using a resource such as Bookemon, reviewed here. How about having students research using this site and then create a project using Zeemaps, reviewed here. Zeemaps allows students to create audio recordings AND choose a location (on a map) where the story takes place.

This site features interactive word puzzles about elections, a wordlist of about ten words (perfect for teaching some new vocabulary words), an alphalary of even more Election vocabulary words, a link to a comic strip activity, and more. The comic strip activity is found in the general "puzzles" section. Most of the puzzles are printable. This site does include some small advertisements.

In the Classroom

Have students work in cooperative learning groups, divide up the vocabulary words, and have each group find the definitions for their assigned vocabulary words. Have the groups share the meaning of a few of their words, by narrating a political picture using ThingLink, reviewed here. Have the groups share the pictures/stories on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Be sure to also check out the interactive word puzzles! They are of varying difficulty levels.

Do you have trouble finding suitable sites to teach state history for YOUR state? This site includes more than 130 "ready to go" lesson plans organized by state. You can also view the collection by states, social studies standards, U.S. History standards, specific skills, time period, or topic. This resource was pulled together by the National Park service. The specific topics vary from America's Space Program to Skagway: Gateway to the Klondike to Brown v. Board of Education to The Trail of Tears to Pearl Harbor to Lewis and Clark to the construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and countless others. Check out what it highlights for your state.

In the Classroom

Search for your state and see what this site has to offer. Looking for a specific topic (i.e. Civil War or Pearl Harbor), search using topics. Take advantage of these ready to go lesson plans. Infuse your lessons with technology by creating a class wiki about the lesson/topic being discussed. Maybe make a wiki guidebook to your state. Not comfortable with wikis? Have no wiki worries - check out the TeachersFirst's Wiki Walk-Through. Save this site in your favorites, and check back as you plan throughout the year.

Fourteen US Vice-Presidents have gone on to become US Presidents. This site examines the lives of these fourteen men. Navigate the site by using the interactive timeline, and then focus in on images of each of these men, along with brief biographies. There is a pull down bar that allows you to specify which president to learn about. In addition, there are video interviews with four of the five living Vice-Presidents: Dick Cheney, George H.W. Bush, Dan Quayle, and Walter Mondale.

In the Classroom

Students might consider how the role of the Vice-President has changed over the course of US history. While the duties of the Vice-President are actually fairly limited, several of these Vice-Presidents became Presidents as a consequence of the death or assassination of the President. Students doing research on any of these fourteen former Presidents might find the information about their Vice-Presidencies useful. The images from this site would also be helpful projected on an interactive whiteboard or projector. Have cooperative learning groups create multimedia presentations to share with the class. Use a site such as ThingLink, reviewed here. Challenge students to find a photo (legally permitted to be reproduced), and then narrate the photo as if it is a news report. To find Creative Commons images for student projects (with credit, of course), try Compfight, reviewed here.

Explore vocabulary and word activities related to Elections on this extensive site for vocabulary, roots, and more. Find interactive vocabulary activities the same list of using election vocabulary words. There are printable crosswords, fill in the blanks and more, all using the same theme words. This and other "themes" available on the site will make vocabulary development fun.

In the Classroom

Share the puzzles on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Have students work with a partner to try out the puzzles on their own. Have students (or groups) create their own word puzzles to share as a class challenge as a student-run interactive whiteboard activity or share them on a class wiki.

If you are a politics geek, this site will occupy you for hours! "Real Clear Politics" is a collection of video clips, editorials, blog postings, and news stories on current politics. The site strives to capture both the left and the right, and "everything in between" and carries the full range from Limbaugh to Olbermann; from the Wall Street Journal to the Nation. If you and your students don't have time to catch all the evening commentary programs, read half a dozen papers, and search the blogsphere for facts and opinion (and who does?) this site might be a great place to start each day. Stories are categorized by date and by topic and there is a link to video content.

In the Classroom

Make this site available in Favorites on your classroom computer for students to refer to often when they have questions about current events or politics or build deeper understanding. You may also want to list this link on your class website or wiki, so students can access the page both in and out of the class. Consider using the site as an icebreaker at the beginning of a class: pick one of the polls or short video clips (share it on your interactive whiteboard or projector) and discuss. Use the site to demonstrate how to negotiate the partisanship in political reporting on television and to teach students about how political bias affects the tenor of the conversation about current events. After doing research, have cooperative learning groups create podcasts or video commercials highlighting a recent event or political figure. Create FREE podcasts using a site such as PodOmatic (reviewed here). Share student-made videos on a site such as Teachers.TV reviewed here.

A website connected to an episode of Frontline, this site looks at the recent collapse of several large "superbanks," and how these bank failures have been connected to the general economic downturn. Many PBS shows' sites are built around the concept of having students "watch the show and discuss"; these require teachers to buy or find a copy of episode. However, this site includes access to the full episode (requires Flash), which can be viewed as a whole or in sections. The resource list is very comprehensive and would give students who are researching national or global economics many good sources. Finally, there is analysis, set up in Q&A format that stands alone, and could be used if you don't want to use classtime to view the video episode.

In the Classroom

Although this site deals with the 2008-2009 banking crisis at a level that is probably more in-depth than most teachers have the opportunity to deal with, it would be useful for an economics class or a recent American history class. You might consider some portions of it during a discussion of the Great Depression in the 1930s, to help students connect that economic time with the present. Finally, this might be a good resource site for students who are interested or who are working on more comprehensive projects. Why not have students create a multimedia presentation of their own demonstrating their understanding of the connection between the bank failures and the economic downturn. Have students create (and respond) on class wikis. Not comfortable with wikis? Have no wiki worries - check out the TeachersFirst's Wiki Walk-Through.

As part of their extensive site for vocabulary, roots, and more, MyVocabulary.com has added a themed area for Constitution Day. Find interactive vocabulary activities using Constitution-related vocabulary words. You will also find printable crosswords, fill in the blanks and more, all using the same theme words. This and other "themes" available on the site will make vocabulary development fun.

In the Classroom

Have students work in cooperative learning groups, divide up the vocabulary words, and have each group find the definitions for their assigned vocabulary words. Have the groups share their words and definitions in an online book, using a tool such as Bookemon (reviewed here). Have the groups share the online books on your interactive whiteboard or projector. If you don't have the time to complete online books, have students share the definitions using a class wiki. Be sure to also check out the interactive word puzzles!

This ambitious site has something for anyone who teaches American history. In fact, if you love history, be prepared to completely lose track of time as you explore the site. From the homepage, click on "For Teachers and Students" to find lesson plans grouped into thematic modules, information about summer institutes for teachers, useful resources, and news about prizes and competitions for teachers and students. Clicking on "The Collection" provides access to a searchable database of primary documents, some themed online exhibitions, and a document of the week (check back often!). The portion of the site dedicated to Historians provides resources for more in-depth research, and may be useful to students working on History Day projects. From the homepage, you can access podcasts from historians, themed history slideshows, and a link to the Institute's regular journal History Now. This site requires Flash. You can get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.

In the Classroom

While you might turn to this site for a quick reference or document citation, this is the site you sit down with over the summer when you're planning your curriculum and lessons for the term or the year. There is simply so much here and so many good ways to access it that you will need to plan on spending significant time here.

Share the slideshows, podcasts, and primary documents on an interactive whiteboard or projector to supplement a lesson. Certainly you'll want to provide this link for your serious students who are doing research. Department chairs, be sure you pass along this resource to American History teachers throughout your district! Not only is it comprehensive, but it's user-friendly and easy to navigate.

Why not have cooperative learning groups explore various facets of this site and create multimedia presentations. Maybe a collaborative wiki about the topic researched. Not sure what a wiki is? Check out the TeachersFirst's Wiki Walk-Through. How about having your students create podcasts using a site such as PodOMatic (reviewed here).

ThanksUSA is a site dedicated to raising money to support the families of those serving in the armed forces. The centerpiece of the site is a virtual treasure hunt focused on the history of the United States. Each year there is a new theme. This year the focus in on the histories of Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, and Rhode Island, along with the histories of the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Marine Corps and the history of ThanksUSA. There are crosswords, wordokus, word searches, kakuros, anagrams and more at the end of each chapter as you try to unlock that chapter's treasure chest. Although the site requires registration to access the treasure hunt (FREE), the game can be played on line, or by downloading materials and printing them out. This site requires Flash and Adobe Acrobat. Get both from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.

In the Classroom

The long term nature of the treasure hunt would make this a good enrichment activity or extra credit project for students. Alteratively, the class could act as a team and undertake one chapter at a time as an ongoing project. The project might also make a good summer enrichment opportunity for students, be good for home schools, or work well with summer day camp groups.

This site offers a very eclectic sampling of publicly-submitted photographs (slideshow) from the 2009 inauguration of President Obama. Photographs include captions, personal stories, items created to celebrate the event (for example, a skateboard), ice sculptures, and MANY others. If you plan to print any pictures, be sure to check on the permission to re-use.

In the Classroom

Share this slideshow on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Choose a picture to use as a writing prompt. Share this site around President's Day. Have students find (or create) their own picture or photo of President Obama. Challenge students to narrate the photo using an online tool such as UtellStory, reviewed here.